Design concept evaluation based on cloud rough model and modified AHP-VIKOR: An application to lithography tool manufacturing process

Design concept evaluation is a wide domain of research as the production process of new product development is mainly based on the evaluations of experts. As different types of uncertainties like vagueness, randomness, and diversity essentially exist in the evaluation information, the manipulation models that deal with just one type of uncertainty are not appropriate for ranking the design alternatives. The integration of multiple approaches into a single mathematical model to create an effective framework is more useful for uncertain information manipulation. This paper presents an innovative group decision -making approach to evaluate design concepts by integrating cloud rough numbers, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method to introduce a novel cloud rough AHP-VIKOR model. The concept of cloud rough numbers is utilized by fusing the merits of the cloud model theory and rough approximations in addressing randomness in experts' judgments and intrapersonal uncertainty for handling consensus inconsistency. Some new modified algebraic operations are introduced to remove the errors in already existing operations of cloud rough numbers. The cloud rough AHP technique is introduced to compute weights of design criteria by computing the cloud rough numbers of linguistic values and their reciprocals. Based on cloud rough values of positive and negative ideals, the individual regret, group utility values and evaluation indices are determined. Using the distance of evaluation indices from minimized cloud rough value, the design alternatives are ranked using different formulae. The significance of the proposed approach is illustrated with a real -world application in lithography tool manufacturing process. The out -performance and reliability of the proposed model is studied by a sensitivity analysis of different parameters in the method, and a comparison analysis with existing approaches.